They had set up another stove outside yesterday to boil peanuts, both because they were worried the stove inside wasn’t enough and also because they feared that using the large stove would generate too much heat. In this weather, keeping the brick bed too warm would make the house uninhabitable.
Lian Manman walked over to the edge of the brick bed, stretched out her hand, and lifted the bed mat. Underneath it, on top of the earthen brick bed, covered with a large piece of paper, lay neatly arranged rows of bright red pointy chilies. These chilies, when picked, were still full of moisture. Lian Shouxin loved eating chili sauce and complained that drying the chilies outside was too slow, so he placed them here to dry over the warm brick bed.
"Dad, you put these chilies here yesterday, didn’t you? They’re dry now and can be ground up to make chili sauce," Lian Manman said as she picked up a red chili pepper.
"Yes," Lian Shouxin replied, not imdiately understanding why Lian Manman suddenly brought this up.
"Ah, can peanuts be dried like this too?" Xiao Qi suddenly chid in. He was young and smart, unencumbered by too many restrictions and structures. Inspired by Lian Manman, he was the first one to think of using the earthen brick bed to dry peanuts.
Lian Manman touched Xiao Qi’s head, her eyes filled with laughter.
Once Xiao Qi ntioned this, everyone else also started to catch on to the idea.
"This really is a good thod," Lian Shouxin laughed and said.
"We only have half a day to dry fifty pounds of peanuts, which might require us to burn more firewood," Lian Manman pointed out.
"We have plenty of firewood," Lady Zhang chid in.
Old Master Lian was a diligent and frugal person. Not a single blade of grass in the field would go uncollected by him. The sorghum stalks, peanut plants, soybean stalks, broomcorn stalks, and the stubble from sorghum and broomcorn, once dried, could all be used as firewood. Shouxin, too, was a man who couldn’t stay idle. After the autumn harvest, he would go to nearby mountains every day to collect branches or even chop so and bring them back to dry, ensuring that there would be enough firewood at ho for the winter so that his wife and children would not be cold.
Now that a solution was found, the entire family sprang into action. Shouxin and Wu Lang went to fetch firewood for the fire, Lady Zhang and Lian Zhizhi started lifting the bed mats, and Manman and Xiao Qi fetched paper and thin straw mats to spread over the earthen brick bed before evenly spreading out the damp peanuts on top.
Once the stove outside was lit and the fire started, the bed quickly ward up, and the moisture on the wet peanuts began to evaporate slowly.
"Our stove and bed were laid by your third uncle. Just a bit of fire and it heats up quickly, which is great in winter. Your third uncle has even more finesse than your dad," Lady Zhang said.
Lian Manman nodded her head, considering that as long as the fire was kept up, the fifty pounds of peanuts would soon dry out.
"Mom, Dad said it’s a waste of firewood to just boil water. Should we cook sothing?" Wu Lang asked as he poked his head in from the outer room.
"First boil a pot of water; that will be enough for us to drink for one day," Lady Zhang replied.
"Put so sugar in it. Let’s drink so sugar water," Lian Manman suggested. Their diet was mainly coarse grains and vegetables, all natural and organic, and with all the work they did inside and outside the house every day, they didn’t have to worry about issues like cholesterol or blood sugar. They could indulge in eating sugar and at without concern, and because of this, Manman was quite happy.
"Manman, didn’t we buy so bones yesterday? Let’s stew them later," Lian Zhizhi reminded.
"I’ll go pull up so radishes," Xiao Qi said.
"Be careful," Lady Zhang, looking at Xiao Qi who was eager to try, said with concern. Her youngest son’s cheeks seed to have rounded out quite a bit recently, "It’s raining outside, throw sothing on and be careful, the ground might be slippery."
"I’ll go too," Lian Manman, seeing that the peanuts were dry and no longer a concern, suddenly felt playful and wanted to join in.
"Go ahead, both of you be careful," Lady Zhang said with a smile.
Lian Manman ran to the outer room, opened the door to look outside, and saw that the rain wasn’t too heavy. But going out like this would still drench her hair and clothes, and with the weather having cooled off, catching a cold wouldn’t be good.
They really needed sothing to cover themselves. But their family didn’t have umbrellas or raincoats, only straw hats for shading from the sun in the sumr. What to do now?
"Manman, Xiao Qi, wear this," Wu Lang stood up, took a clean burlap sack from behind the water vat on the miscellaneous shelf, grasped two corners of the bottom end, brought them together, and then shook out the sack. This turned the sack into a cone-shaped hat with a long piece hanging down. Wu Lang put the conical hat on Lian Manman’s head, a burlap sack a little more than a ter long, completely covering her head and half her body.
Touching the simple burlap "raincoat" on her body, Lian Manman wondered if she should praise the intelligence of the working people.
Soon Xiao Qi also donned a burlap raincoat. The conical hat was pointy, and the hanging piece of burlap had a Bohemian flair to it. If one covered their face with a cloth, this look seed strangely familiar, yet at the mont, she couldn’t recall what it reminded her of.
Xiao Qi had already happily skipped outside, even deliberately reaching out his hand to catch the rain. Before Lian Manman could co back to her senses, she too jumped into the rain, laughing as foolishly as Xiao Qi.
"Stop playing, you two," Lian Zhizhi chased after them, standing at the door, looked at Lian Manman and Xiao Qi laughing, and scolded, "Hurry there and back, don’t catch a cold." Knowing her children better than anyone, Lady Zhang anticipated that Xiao Qi and Lian Manman would want to play in the rain and had sent Lian Zhizhi to remind them.
"Oh," Lian Manman responded dumbly, realizing her childishness must be because she spent too much ti with Xiao Qi; she had been influenced by him.
Lian Manman and Xiao Qi then ran to the backyard, pulled up three white radishes from the vegetable patch stems, ran back, washed the radishes clean, cut them into large chunks, and put them into the soup to stew with the bones.
By the ti the bone soup had simred to a thick broth, the peanuts on the kang bed inside the house were almost dry. The family busily set the table, had lunch, then gathered the peanuts into bags, loaded them onto a flatbed cart, covered them with straw mats to protect from the rain, and Shouxin pushed the cart while Manman, Wu Lang, and Xiao Qi headed to town together.
******
Thinking back to childhood, deliberately running around outside in the rain. Kids love playing with water, don’t they? I don’t know why. (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welco to co to Qidian (qidian) to vote for it, monthly tickets, your support is my biggest motivation.)
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